Site set up to thank Poland for stopping patent push

Page Tools

A Swiss programmer has set up a site where people can send a
message of thanks to Poland for its role in halting the push to
adopt a directive on patents by the European Union.

On Tuesday, the Council of the European Union took the proposal
for a directive off its agenda after a meeting in Brussels where
the item had been slated for approval without debate.

The campaign against software patents in Europe is being led by
NoSoftwarePatents,
a group that was set up earlier this year by 1&1, part of the
United Internet group and a publicly traded German company, Linux
vendor Red Hat, and database vendor MySQL AB, Europe's largest open
source company.

Last month, Poland backed away from the
directive on software patents, saying it had concluded that the
proposed directive would not achieve the stated goals of limiting
patents on software and business methods in Europe.

Polish undersecretary Wlodzimierz Marcinski told the Brussels
meeting on Tuesday that his country wanted some more time to
prepare a "constructive declaration". This was accepted and the
proposal for the software directive was taken off the agenda.

Florian Müller, a software industry veteran who runs a
company named SWM Software-Marketing, and is managing the
NoSoftwarePatents campiagn, said: "This is a grassroots thing - it
was set up by a Swiss programmer, and it is now gaining more and
more momentum. My campaign is also supporting this independent
initiative.

Müller said it was also open to non-EU citizens. "In fact,
the initiator is Swiss, and Switzerland is not even a member of the
EU. It's about the worldwide fight against software patents and
ruthless organisations that want to turn them against honest
software developers."